


As They Rise

by RosemarysBabysitter (TashaElizabeth)



Category: Hannibal (TV), Trouble in the Heights (2011)
Genre: Crack, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, chiltada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:38:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaElizabeth/pseuds/RosemarysBabysitter





	1. It Begins

Frederick chose not to be impressed by Nevada’s grand entrance as he pulled his car, tires squealing, into Frederick’s driveway and came rolling out with a duffel bag in one hand and a frankly ridiculously sized assault rifle in the other. Frederick did rather wonder if the rifle had been frantically acquired in the forty five minutes since Nevada had called him or if it had been tucked away in some corner of Nevada’s apartment. He wasn’t sure which scenario he found less disturbing.

Nevada burst through the door, shoved Frederick away from the glass and locked the deadbolt hard before throwing his duffel on the floor.

“You’re overreacting,” Frederick said.

“I told you,” Nevada said, pushing his back against the wall and peaking out into the street. “Its all over my neighborhood already.”

“So are bath salts.”

Nevada rolled his eyes and, satisfied with the empty street, bustled Frederick further into the house. “Did you get your shit together?”

Frederick stopped a few steps inside and refused to be moved further. “Where are we going? Why can’t we stay here?”

“Your house is too big, mi amor,” Nevada said, absently. Satisfied that Frederick was staying out of sight of the outdoors, he went from doorway to doorway, peering into the spaces beyond and giving them tense, cursory appraisals before shutting the doors.

Frederick rubbed his temple. “I just don’t think that a few isolated incidents means flesh eating zombies.”

“Who said anything about flesh eating?” Nevada turned on his heel and gestured to one side with the gun. “Why would you bring that up? I don’t have enough to worry about?”

Frederick didn’t laugh and took a deep breath to ensure that he would continue not laughing. He approached Nevada very gently and put his hands on the breadth of Nevada’s shoulders. “I understand that you are worried about me and that you are showing your concern by taking action.” His voice sounded patronizing even to himself and he tried to swing it into a more positive tone. “I just don’t think this is the most sensible course of action to undertake, given how little we know about what’s going on.”

Nevada smiled, licked his lips, nodded to show Frederick he had heard and understood everything he had said and then continued as though Frederick had never spoken. “Get your shit together or I will get it together for you and you will not like what I decide is important.”

Frederick sighed. “Nevada…”

Glass shattered somewhere in the back of the house.

Nevada wrapped an arm around Frederick’s back, pulling Frederick tight against his chest. He hefted the gun with his other hand.

“What was…” Frederick started and Nevada shook his head.

There was another crash, closer now, like someone drunk and stumbling. “The kitchen,” Frederick whispered.

“Shut up.” Holding Frederick close with the flat of his hand Nevada began to slowly back them towards the front door.

The thing that swung around the corner might, in Frederick’s professional medical opinion, have been human at one point. This was before its skin had swelled, taking on a sickly green pallor. This was before it had lost the lower half of its jaw and several of the upper ribs as well as the life in its eyes. This was before the smell, which struck Frederick full in the face as the thing shambled and groaned towards them. It smelled totally and unreservedly of death.

“Look,” Nevada said. He pointed with gun. “Look Frederick.”

Through the hole in the thing’s chest, beyond the crushed and missing ribs, Frederick could see the upper curve of the lungs, black and bloated. The did not move. Frederick watched as the thing moved and staggered toward them and the lungs did not inflate even as the thing let out a harsh, rasping moan.

“It’s dead, mi amor. I told you,” Nevada said. “They’re all dead.”

Frederick put his face against Nevada’s shoulder. “Make it stop,” he said tentatively and Nevada fired three shots into the thing’s head. Frederick didn’t scream, though the shots were louder than he expected, but he gasped at the air so hard it hurt his throat. The thing fell to the floor in pieces. Nevada took a long, hard look at it to make sure it would not get up again, then he turned to Frederick.

“You’re things?’

“They’re in my car.”

“Good boy.”


	2. Frederick Kills his First Zombie

He went outside and walked down to the road, pulling his flannel jacket tight around him and looking left and then right and then left again and seeing nothing. Nothing for miles. Nothing but the empty endless road and the curve of the earth at the horizon.

The cornfield rustled gently in the breeze. Frederick went around the house, looking for a woodpile and finding a large one, teetering against the half ruined wall of the back shed. He made for it, stamping down the dry grass as he walked. His black boots were new and heavy and he hated them because they didn’t suit him in the slightest and because when he balked, Nevada had told him sharply to shut up about it.

“Soon,” Nevada has told him after to try and make up with him. “Not just yet, but soon.” When even the army left the cities and everyone quit using money. “Soon we’ll have anything we want.” Frederick wondered what kind of boots there’d be then. 

He kicked at the base of the woodpile and saw the wall behind it shift.

The house and the shed, the woodpile and the corn field that wasn’t growing corn, were all starkly in the middle of nothing and nowhere. They were nearly 14 hours into the broad, deserted swathe of the midwest. He knew precisely how far they were from the last place he knew because Nevada had drove it all the day before, stopping for gas and pills and truck stop coffee. Not letting Frederick drive and with his handgun gleaming silver on his thigh the whole time.

Frederick began to gather wood from the pile, avoiding anything that seemed structurally integral. The wind moved the corn husks on their dried stalks. There was a moment before it happened, when fear flushed through Frederick’s veins and he dropped the wood. Maybe he sensed something moving. Maybe he could smell it. He stepped back from the woodpile, slowly, and then the woodpile lunged at him, catching his ankle when he tried to run.

From beneath it, through the wall, came scuttling something no longer human. Its long arms were dislocated at the shoulder, the knees backwards in their joints, its fingers grasping and pulling Frederick’s foot to its open, chattering mouth. It ran with the liquid motion of a millipede and came up, over and under the tumbling wood. Frederick fell to the ground, kicking at the feel of broken teeth against his foot. He drove the heel of his boot into the things face, once, twice, felt the shudder of bone against bone.

He scrambled back in the dried grass and the dirt and kicked again but the thing’s fingers were tight at his ankle and it hissed at him. It was strong. Frederick sobbed and kicked, trying to scream and not able to produce the sounds. Oh god, he thought, after everything that had happened to him he was going to die on a pot farm in Iowa and it made him so mad that he grabbed the log beside him and sat up to drive it into the creatures face again again, burying its nose in its skull and when the stick broke into pieces, driving his fist down over and over into the wet feeling of cracking bone and ruined flesh.

The thing released him and once he realized it had he scrambled to his feet and ran, stumbling, to Nevada’s car. The trunk wasn’t locked and when he threw open the hatch everything in the trunk came tumbling out onto the ground. Cans rolled away into grass. Something broke at his feet and a rising medicinal smell came from it. Tangles of clothing dripped off the trunk floor. He found the camping shovel with its sharp, ragged edge and picked it up.

He strode back to the woodpile with the shovel in his hand and then he drove it into the soft place behind the spasming creature’s now blind head. It came away clean and the thing didn’t move anymore.

Frederick dropped the shovel, went back into the house and sat in front of the cold fireplace for a long time. Behind him, on the bed, Nevada snored and shifted occasionally to indicate he was alive. Frederick didn’t know how long he waited until he picked up the rifle off the chair and went back outside to scrape off the shovel and collect all the cans and bottles from the grass. He placed them all carefully into the back of the SUV and firmly shut the hatch before he went to the pump to wash the blood off his shaking hands.


End file.
